For Lobbyist, Unveiling UFOs Consumes Life

One day nearly 20 years ago, Stephen Bassett realized that UFO abductees needed a lobbyist.

He had spent four months working for the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research out of a modest town house in Cambridge, Mass., when he had the epiphany: He could continue his research with John Mack, the leading authority on the alien abductions, for the rest of his life, but it would never make a difference.

“It occurred to me that it wasn’t a scientific problem, but a political one,” he said. They could pile evidence of extraterrestrial encounters from the White House lawn to the moon, and no one would pay it any mind. What the issue needed was someone who could get the powers-that-be to listen.

The alien issue was really heating up in 1996, what with the summer blockbuster Independence Day, and Bassett worried that someone else would get the same idea. So he quit his volunteer gig, piled his belongings atop his beat-up Mazda RX-7 and drove off to Washington.

Source: Arkansas Online